The last thing I want is to be accused of being biased. I dislike declaring a “winner” of E3, because I feel like, as consumers, WE are the winners, especially when all parties concerned have a strong showing. That said, it’s disingenuous to ignore just HOW strong certain presentations perform over others. Sony, much like last year, absolutely killed it; but as both Microsoft and the Playstation brand parent were focusing squarely on games, the playing field was far more level this time. Sony, still, not only met Microsoft blow-for-blow, but they pulled out ahead to such a degree, I found difficulty in whittling down their event to merely five entries. As a result, I completely avoided cross platform games (no matter how excited I got for No Man’s Sky, Mortal Kombat X, and Arkham Knight). Here we go!

5.) ABZU
Giant Squid is a studio to watch (as its founder previously held the position of Art Director for thatgamecompany’s Journey), and if their first game is any indication, success will be synonymous with the studio’s name. The phrase that smacked my mind to attention when the game was revealed was “underwater Journey,” and I can’t think of a more joyous combination of terms. Details are scarce at the moment, but from what was provided in the trailer, it seems to be a game focusing on exploration, and interacting with the immersed animalia.

4.) Bloodborne
A few days before the press events, a From Software leak exposed the world to Project Beast. Well, it has a new name, and it promises to titillate and tantalize every bit as much as Demon’s Souls did. The entire trailer takes place above ground, in a Victorian city. Whether or not the game takes place entirely above ground is unknown at this time, but I highly doubt we won’t see our fair share of catacombs and sewers if From Software’s recent history has anything to say about it. Very excited for this one.

3.) Entwined
One part Tempest, one part Rez, Entwine didn’t grab me at first, but as more of the game was revealed in the trailer, the less I could contain myself. Often, it’s the simplest mechanics that prove the most engrossing, and I expect no less with this beautiful title. The best part? It’s available as I type this.

2.) The Order
Sony has Victorian Dark Fantasy on lockdown with Bloodborne and The Order. Seamlessly transitioning between cut scenes and gameplay, more so than any other game to date; and while this title is just more shooting dudes with guns, the setting and tone push it far out in front of the FPS pack. CoD? Battlefield? They’re alright. The Order? Sign me up right now!

1.) Little Big Planet 3
I didn’t see this one coming, as obvious as it might have seemed. I’ve been a fan of one Mr. Sackboy ever since his first game, all the way up through Karting, and this announcement got me unreasonably excited. He has new friends, new mechanics, new textures, and all 8+ million levels created by all of us over the course of his entire back catalogue. Oddsock is adorable, and the rest of Sacky’s brand new cadre are delightful.

Nintendo’s event is tomorrow morning at 9am PDT. I won’t be able to cover it, as I’ll be on my way to the convention center to get on the floor ASAP, but you can watch it yourself via Nintendo Direct. I expect big, bold strokes from the House of N, and you should too. This year’s E3 is turning out to be a doozey.

Ed Boon, founder of the Warner Bros. owned NetherRealm Studios, took to Twitter yesterday morning to announce the next entry in the Mortal Kombat Franchise - Mortal Kombat X.

We know nothing outside of what’s been presented in the graphic video below, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that situation will have been remedied by the close of E3, next week.

Until then, though, we can certainly speculate! Will the environment be interactive, as show by Sub Zero ripping off a tree branch and freezing it to convert it to a club? Will there be “EX” moves, again demonstrated by Sub Zero with what looks to be a powered up freeze blast? Who knows! But whatever the case, it’s looking to be as suitably brutal and unnecessarily gory as ever. We’ll have full details upon their release, stay tuned!

Earlier today, IGN confirmed that the most recent addition to the Guilty Gear franchise will be making its way across to Pacific as early as this Fall. That’s a mere three months, people!

Guilty Gear has the distinct honor of having been the first “anime” fighting game to hit the North American tournament scene, which paved the way for not only professional competition in games such as P4 Arena, BlazBlue, and others, but also proved financial viability, contributing to their creation, in the first place.

The game will be playable at E3 (in one week), and while we don’t have any information on the release dates in other regions, we do know that the game will be appearing exclusively on PS3, and PS4.

Warner Bros. Studios, owner of DC Comics and Warner Bros. Interactive, let fly that LEGO Batman 3 will soon be a reality. Rejoice! Of all the LEGO franchises, it’s been Batman that’s received the most consistent praise from a wide variety of sources, and now that story continues.

In the trailer, you’ll see the Watchtower (Justice League HQ and orbital space center), as well as the Justice League themselves, pushing the formula that made LEGO Batman 2 so successful into the wide unknown of space.

There are few details beyond what’s shown in the trailer at this time, but speculation would suggest visiting strange alien worlds while on patrol with the Green Lantern Corps., or possibly even Mount Olympus. We plan on finding out much more next week at E3.

Watch_Dogs on PS4 with exclusive content! Coming soon. [Source: sonyplaystation Official YouTube Page]
Watch Dogs launches on all major formats, Tuesday May 27th, 2014! Don’t miss the opportunity to be first to play Ubisoft’s latest open world title which hopes to dethrone Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. Will Watch Dogs set the new sandbox standard? Will the likes of GTA and Red Dead maintain their positions atop the open world mountain? Only time will tell! -AE

Over the weekend, footage of the never-to-be-released Bonk: Brink of Extinction surfaced via a mysterious YouTube channel. The only information provided is that the footage featured is running on PS3 hardware (specifically the Slim version of the system), and that “all DLC is in place,” but without more than this, we simply cannot speculate further.

Once upon a time, Bonk ran head-to-head with both Mario and Sonic. After Sonic abdicated his claim to the throne and joined forces with Nintendo’s plumbing platformer king, Bonk was left (several years prior, and due, in part, to the minuscule reception the TurboGrafx-16 system received in the US) in the annals of history, rarely to be heard from over the decades.

Finally, he has resurfaced, and it is in the unfortunate form of a death-rattle. Hopefully Konami is able to prevent his extinction entirely, by reinvigorating and revivifying you to a point where we can become good friends, once again.

You can’t talk Fez without talking Phil Fish and his flash-in-the-pan tenure in the public eye.

There, I mentioned him, and while I have a wide variety of opinions on the guy and some things he’s infamous for having said, this isn’t ++Good People.

So, with that out of the way, let’s discuss the game, shall we? Fez is a love letter to video gaming. It borrows nostalgia, binds it to a modern idea, and dumps the player into the world, allowing them to explore to their heart’s content, all while getting out of its own way. Sound simple? That’s because it is. Fez does not innovate, but what it lacks in technical revolution it makes up for with such a profound understanding of what video games are, were, and should be. Simple, and fun. Simplicity is the golden core at the center of game design (or design of any sort, if you ask me), and Phil understands this. And through his understanding, he puts design to great use, achieving impact through simple means.

Fez doesn’t dwell on story for very long. It establishes the world, and gives you a reason to go on your quest, but beyond that, it just lets you be… an approach a lot of modern games could benefit from, should they choose to employ it. The little, white, fluffy population loves their two dimensions, and when a big, scary cube shows up, fragments itself, and then scatters to the four corners of their flat universe, everyone becomes fearful. The Fez you, Gomez, wear allows you to control these cube fragments (all smaller cubes in and of themselves), and as such, it is your responsibility to gather up the chunks and return everything to its normal state.

The gameplay is also simple. It’s a vertical platformer at its core, with one exception: you can rotate the world 90 degrees, exposing four different sides to your eye – only one at any given time; the world of Fez exists in a 3D space, but only presents itself in two dimensions; a ledge you couldn’t reach before becomes a stepping stone when observed from another angle, and paths not visible become clear only when manipulated – in order to create platforms and paths to your goal. It is in this mechanic that Fez invests its brain bending puzzle elements, expanding the purview of the game, but its synergies between systems keep it from becoming confounding or, far more condemning, misunderstood.

The chiptunes are excellent. It evokes emotion while maintaining a true 8-bit origin. In fact, I’ve never quite heard anything like it, and while I’m not an expert on the genre, nor have I hear close to everything out there; I can say with a measure of certainty that it makes a very strong case for the artistic merits of chiptunes, contrary to popular opinion.

The map, though merely a navigation tool, deserves special mention. It’s a bit of a challenge to learn how to read it correctly, but as you discover more and more levels, and the map swells larger and larger, you can’t help but stand in awe. This thing, by the end, can show you precisely how large the Fez universe is at a single glance, yet it maintains visual order in a way that isn’t confusing in the least (again, once you learn it).

Speaking of those level unlocks, holy crap, are there a ton of them. And it’s always satisfying to unlock more and more. To delve deeper and deeper into this whimsical, classy, neo-retro insta-classic; because you know it was your brain working out these 2D jump puzzles in a mostly hidden 3D space. And the rewards just keep rolling in (in the form of more levels to conquer, and more cubes to collect).

I know I said I wasn’t going to mention it, but as there is literally nothing I can find wrong with the game, I had to turn to darker sources… Phil was under a lot of negative pressure when he said the things he did (the comments about Japanese games in particular), and once met with public outrage, it was enough for him to pop. I completely understand him, though. He was going through the dissolving of a friendship over Fez, as well as subsequent legal battles. He was in a negative place, and once met with more negativity, he reacted with volatility.

The glorious map.

Subsequently, due to community outrage, the sequel was canceled before development even began. It hurts my heart what happened to Phil, and we are all hurt as a community that such a passionate man as he has decided it’s time to clock out of this industry, for good. No more Fez 2… but on a deeper level, we lost his passion for games. We will never be able to recover that, and shame on those of you who feel justified in your petulant outrage that cost us all his vision.

Verdict – 10/10 (++Good): The simple presentation, coupled with the obvious passion that went into making it allows for an emotional impact while playing that isn’t often achieved, let alone sought out in development. This emotion doesn’t come from a plot point, or character interaction, like the bigger budget games of our day. It comes from experiencing the game. Every jump, every rotation, every small animation. The colors, the pixels, the chiptunes. All of it assaults you relentlessly with such overwhelming beauty… I dare you to say anything bad about a man who just gets it like Phil does, and then has the fortitude and excellence in execution enough to share it with all of us. Shame on you.

Ah, Skullgirls. When the gaming media flipped the eff out over your announcement, I was stoic. When the tourney scene took to you like a fish to water, I was apathetic. When Steam decided to list you at $5.00 during a holiday sale… I couldn’t say “no.”

Finding myself in the possession of one of the most over-hyped pieces of software entertainment I could think of within a reasonable amount of time (most overhyped since Daikatana… sick burn), and having recently discovered that my SFIV Arcade Fightstick is recognized by Windows, I decided to give you a try.

This game was the brainchild of Mike Z., a well loved member of the FGC tournament scene, and Alex Ahad, who had allegedly been cooking these particular character designs since he’d been in high school. I said “was,” because Konami recently took Skullgirls off of both PSN and XBLA without any telegraphed warning whatsoever. Something having to do with their arrangement with Autumn Games, Skullgirls’ ‘handler,’ going South. There are few details, and what’s there is confusing to an outside onlooker, but since Konami is the publisher, they can do whatever the heck they want with it. Lab Zero, the developer (actually, this is the reorganization of the original development company, Reverge Labs – same guys, new name, and assuming all development responsibility) had promised it would go up again soon thereafter, and with free bells and whistles; but that’s not the point, here. The point is: the game is everything it’s cracked up to be.

Borrowing HEAVILY from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, the game doesn’t hide the fact that it’s an evolution in the VS. Fighting genre. While maintaining mechanics that are familiar and that work beautifully – completely avoiding the weird space that Tatsunoko vs. Capcom occupies – Baroque Canceling is like X-Factor, guys; why you LOVE it in MvC3/U, and hated it in TvC, I’ll never know… same goes for the 3-button layout, but I digress. Tag teams and assists, snapbacks, delayed hyper combos – Skullgirls was a textbook carry-over from the well entrenched Vs. series, and the visuals only helped to push it over the edge with the community.

The control, likewise, is as tight as any tournament fighter should be. There’s really nothing more to say about that.

I never thought the game looked remarkable. Staring at static screens, you might think that the concepts are cute, and the characters kitschy – which is exactly what I thought – but seeing the game in motion will make you a believer. Small gestures and drawn-on details make each character a unique personage, and exemplify why the game was nominated for Best Animated Video Game at the 2012 Annie’s.

The plot follows my most favorite formula: short, sweet, and devoid of any convolution. Once every seven years, the Skull Heart appears in the Canopy Kingdom (part 1920’s America, part WWII, part fantasy setting complete with magic) to grant one female her deepest desire… but should she be impure of heart, she will transform into the Skullgirl, wreaking havoc across the land. Each character in the cast is after the Heart for a different reason, and all of the others stand in the way of any one of them succeeding… so, you know, they fight.

If you haven’t given this game the time of day up to now, I’d recommend you go ahead and purchase it on Steam or PSN (the XBLA version still isn’t available as of this writing). It’s like an old friend you haven’t seen in a while – familiar, able to pick right back up where you left off so many years ago, and DAMN! Did he lose some weight! Looking good!

PROS:
1.) The excellent, familiar mechanics that beat Tatsunoko v. Capcom at it’s own game. New game systems are difficult to execute well, especially in a niche enthusiast community (unless you’re Arc System Works), and Skullgirls knows it. To wit, it effectively cannibalizes established mechanics in order to both appeal to long time fighting fans and maintain a complex level of play. It succeeds.

2.) The story is cohesive, interesting, simple, and it informs the gameplay in a very comprehensive manner. There is a natural reason for these characters to be fighting one another, and not some silly, contrived “I wanna be the very best” nonsense. Yeah, I said it. Ryu’s motivation is nonsense.

CONS:
1.) The game is HIGHLY unphotogenic. This is a trivial issue, I know, but but for a medium that relies on visuals to sell itself (and let’s not beat around the bush, here – they’re called VIDEO games; half of the appeal is what they LOOK like), that ends up being a real detriment. It’s one of the things that enabled my initial ho-hum attitude.

2.) Eh… as much as I hate to say it, the familiar mechanics really make the game feel dated. In an era of X-Factors, auto-tag air raves, auto-doubles, linkers, and three button control schemes, borrowing from the past without looking toward the future – or even the PRESENT – tarnishes Skullgirl’s gilded sheen with a thickening layer of rust right out of the box.

It is now, in the waning days of the previous console generation, that the straggling releases condemned to debut at the end of the line have the greatest chance of being completely overlooked. The causes for this are wide and varied, from the notoriously short print runs of the final few Saturn games, to the necessary under-stocking of retail outlets making way for the new, shiny console hotnesses. And this is a true shame, for it’s at the end of the console’s life cycle that developers are at the most familiar with the hardware and its capabilities.

No piece of hardware taught us this lesson better than the PS2; and no other developers had a better handle on the end-of-life window than ATLUS, NISA, and Vanillware. Odinsphere, Grim Grimoire, and *deep breath* Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, among others, proved the savvy with which a swan song can be trumpeted… and the frustrating lack of frequency with which you’d find these on store shelves.

Things will be no different this time around, and I caution you to look up from your Destinies and Titanfalls every once in a while, lest you miss out on some of the more satisfying, and most difficult to find games of the PS3’s generation. Witch and the Hundred Knight, obviously, numbers among them.

Admittedly, Witch and the Hundred Knight (hereafter referred to as WHK) isn’t going to be for everyone, but what NISA title is? The player that this will appeal to is the same guy or gal who loves grinding to impossible power levels, searching every nook and cranny for each possible weapon, and managing stats that quickly get out of hand… so, you know, the typical NISA fan.

Regarding gameplay, it’s an extremely simple affair. The camera is fixed above the battlefield, and you run your little avatar around while cutting into your enemies with sword, axe, hammer, and spear… and since your master, Metallia the witch, is as disgruntled as witches come, everyone is your enemy. The experience is not unlike the Legend of Zelda at its core, but diversity can be found in equipping your knight with a wide variety of weapons and items.

You can have several weapons equipped at one time, and as you push the attack button, you’ll swing with each weapon in turn. Each weapon has its own strengths – spears are great for crowd control, while hammers are single-target massive damage dealers – so you can craft a combo that keeps you safe by pushing out groups of enemies, smashes singular foes, such as bosses, or you can take a more eclectic approach, equipping one weapon of each type for maximum chaos.

WHK looks like a PS2 game, but in that very specific, end of a generation way, sort of forcing it to keep company with the aforementioned Odinsphere (etc.), and evoking a remarkably tangible sense of PS2-ness. I’m sure it wasn’t done purposely (probably due to a smaller budget), but the dev team really made the game shine in an incredibly nostalgic manner.

Regarding the plot, I was specifically asked to avoid mentioning much, as the game is story driven, and spoilers are a bad time for everyone. What I will say is that, after some simple establishment in the tutorial level, the entire game revolves around your acquisition of land, and the press ganging of of villagers to your cause. Metallia is a swamp witch, and so she wants the world to be half-submerged beneath the foul, fetid muck of her beloved fen, and it’s your job to ensure that happens. Along the way you’ll roughhouse with the various denizens of the different areas you transform in order to set them straight about Metallia, as well as to grab an invaluable stock of items.

And then there’s the GigaCal system. The game doesn’t really do too good of a job explaining precisely what a “GigaCal” is in relation to the game world, and subsequently, all I ever saw it as was an unnecessary timer that forces you to return home, completely crushing any momentum you may have built up, and ruining the flow of an otherwise enjoyable game. There are ways to add time to this timer, but not perpetually. It wasn’t so bad that I put the game down, but it definitely dampened my experience.

Verdict – 7.0 (Good): Thankfully, WHK won’t be hard to find due to its presence on PSN as a result of NISA’s commitment to digital distribution, but it will deliver on every other aspect of an era ending gem. It’s quirky, funny, irreverent, and solidly grounded on unshakably classic design and mechanics… if only the GigaCal restrictions weren’t in place, forcing unnecessary return trips, and padding out the games length unnecessarily. Also, some of those cut-scenes can be excessive.

I love PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale. Probably more than I love the Smash Bros. franchise. Which means I found it particularly upsetting to discover that Sony had officially announced they would be discontinuing support for the game, cementing the roster as-is, and rolling out only one more balance patch, and possibly one more map pack.

I was doubly disappointed when the announcement came in that Sony decided to end their relationship with SuperBot (who suffered layoffs as a result), and then that their own Santa Monica studio had suffered layoffs. The folks responsible for All-Stars were clearly a talented bunch, and losing them to the annual round of layoffs is disheartening.

Enter Dead Alien Cult. A brand new developer comprised of two gentlemen, Andrew Marquis and John Lawrence, who were previously on the team responsible for PSASBR. And they have a new game to show us!

Dead Alien Cult describes their new game as “a comical, story driven Arcade Action Adventure-Dual Stick Shooter-Dungeon Crawler-Roguelike-Lite… basically.” And after watching the trailer, I must admit I find that description not only apt, but necessary.